Siddharth Sabhaarwal has topped the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2021 in Electronics and Communication paper by obtaining a1000 GATE score or 82 marks out of 100. Despite achieving the top rank, Sabhaarwal will not opt for admission to IIT nor is he looking for a government job — both of which are available to GATE qualified.
Sabhaarwal claims to have appeared for the exam for its experience. He has qualified GATE twice before as well. The first time he appeared was in 2012 when he attained 61st rank and again in 2013 when he got 31st rank.
An IIT-Delhi graduate, Sabhaarwal has also cracked the Indian Engineering Services (IES) exam held by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in 2015 and was the third rank holder in the exam. He has worked as an IES officer till 2018 and left the coveted job to become a teacher. He is currently working as an educator with Unacademy, an online learning platform, and helps students crack engineering entrance exams including GATE and IES.
“After cracking my GATE 2013 exam, I opted to study at IIT-Delhi. While I was pursuing my MTech degree, I used to teach my friends and make them understand some concepts. This is when I developed an interest in teaching. It gave me a sense of purpose,” said Sabharwaal who claims to have appeared for exams one after the other for the experiences.
“When I realised that teaching is my calling, I wanted to make students study the toughest exams and then started appearing for engineering exams one after another. This helped me have the first-hand experience and now I teach students based on my experience and not bookish knowledge,” he told news18.com.
While he has cracked GATE twice before, Sabharwaal appeared for the exam this year as there were several changes introduced in the exam from this year onwards including the introduction of multiple select questions, revision of syllabus for all papers. Sabharwaal said it helped him access how a student would have felt during exams and what strategies would really work under the pressure situations.
“I often tell students to attempt one-markers first as they are easy and one builds confidence in the exam by solving these and then moving on to the two markers, however, this year there was no demarcation of the questions based on marks. Now, at this point the examinee has to change strategy,” said Sabharwaal, who appeared for the exam to know these nuances.
He prepared for the engineering entrance while continuing his job. He knew the concepts from his years of teaching and focused only on the application part. For the GATE 2021 exam, Sabharwaal said he attempted mock papers and practiced the previous years’ papers. He used to pull all-nighters during the last 2-3 months before the exams, he told news18.com.
Advising GATE aspirants he said, “Reference books are only for college-level, to crack any entrance test — GATE or IES — one needs conceptual clarity and practice of those concepts.”
Sabharwaal hails from a business family in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh. When he decided to quit his job as an IES officer, Sabharwaal recalls he had to convince his parents a bit but they understood his passion for teaching.
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